Worst MMO Ever? - Swords of Legends Online

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#####
Budget breakdown:
graphics: a lot
gameplay: some
voice acting: none
Swords of Legends Online is a major eastern franchise ported to the west by our old friends Gameforge, it is potentially the worst voice acted MMO on the market.
From a major hype marketing campaign to less than 1000 daily players on Steam, this game failed, and it failed hard.
Thanks to the Patreon supporters and Twitch subs who keep this channel going :)

[@Landrar]

Josh, this is completely unfair. The voice acting gets good in the end game.

[@gingerbeargames]

you nearly killed me with that! this should be pinned

[@LikaLaruku]

XD

[@leana339]

@@gingerbeargames Funny enough that's what all the ppl say that still play that lmao

[@babytiny5807]

Ironically, this is actually the case for ff14. Replaying 2.0 story is just awful in the voice acting department

[@ActionFitz79]

In fairness... that actually happened in FF14 at the end of the ARR story hehehe

[@logangaskill4]

"As a player character, you have subtitles but no voice" I think this is one of the few games where that is a blessing

[@kyotheman69]

yes with these terrible voices indeed, FF14 i really want our character have voice already

[@yui_mikai]

@@kyotheman69 no

[@gfuviddisf]

@@kyotheman69 yeah that would be nice

[@icecreambone]

@@kyotheman69 having played SWTOR, i can tell you that voiced responses can actually ruin the story even if the voice acting is good, because there's a bigger chance of the character saying something in a way you weren't expecting. FF14 is better without voices

[@charlestrudel8308]

Well, in english at least.

[@21Whitefire]

If you ask me, the voice acting is the most realistic in any MMO I've ever seen. No one is coherent, everyone talks over each other, their own idea of what was said doesn't even line up with what they articulated; it's refreshing to see an MMO be so ambitious as to perfectly capture your average trip to a Wal-Mart

[@cen3684]

haha that last part was unexpected

[@thegroovee]

😂😂😂 jesus I laughed so hard

[@hogoromootsutsuki4079]

The Sarcasm is strong with this one

[@Toshi3.71]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL😂😂😂😂

[@icantthinkofaname1009]

A true mumblecore RPG epic

[@x.r.3513]

“Those people are all headed straight into their own graves. We could also do that later” What an icon

[@miriamweller812]

I mean, even the player characte dies and comes back - it's not really something you want to do, thogh, since it is quite an effort to lead something back and very risky.

[@zzbd1n277]

haahahahh

[@ChillavaKirby]

I love the way he says that last bit kinda sounds like he's asking her out

[@denizium]

@@ChillavaKirby "eyy bb wanna go to our graves later?"

[@purplehaze2358]

It's so refreshing to see an MMO be bad for reasons other than being highly P2W.

[@rhyspatterson679]

He had done a few like that but at least half have that dreaded cash shop focus. Or kinda worse Didn't have a cash shop at first but git bought out by the company that shall not he named and had the shop added for whale hunting

[@Mysticfateee]

The fact that it's one that's so new is shocking though

[@miriamweller812]

Overall you can't even judged it in the moment, since the non chinese versiojn is in a giant catch up rush. Many problems come from that, everything is going so quickly, you got new dungeons and raids pretty much every 2-4 weeks and item level also escalates, while more problems are created by the breaking down to earlier levels to somehow fit, what for example isn't good for balance. Not really a super good idea, at least not working all too well, but how good or bad the game is will be the question at the end of this catchup when it's really the actual, current game, not old, reversed stuff - and it will also be very interesting how the complete rework with the new engine will work out. Overall something absolut rare to see, that a developer re-creates his game witha new engine, near to no developer pushes so much work into a game.

[@AmarantFFO]

sadly, that's the gaming world we lie in today because of retards people's purchases

[@mfallen6894]

@@miriamweller812 Guh?

[@cybroxde]

The audio balancing literally managed to scare someone just walking past the TV. This game is top tier entertainment.

[@Nioureux]

You could say, first monitor content.

[@katiequeen7225]

@@Nioureux first monitor but not fullscreen

[@bunnyknight2]

Do u mean: walking past the second monitor ?

[@SuperLeonBlade]

@@Nioureux I only have one monitor. All content is first monitor content.

[@7offee]

Is there any other GOOD wuxia type mmo's out there? I read a lot of wuxias and would love it

[@MrRafaelq]

Just a note about the strange story: this is straight up a Xianxia novel transposed to videogame medium. That's why every somewhat important character is considered a massive badass with "super powers"; every character worth giving a shit in a Xianxia novel is super awesome and powerful and talented. So for a eastern, most likely chinese audience, this kind of story is more common, and therefore more acceptable, than to a western one simply due to cultural factors. The 70s martial arts movies you reference are in fact based of Wuxia novels, which share many tropes, but are more focused on real/martial arts aspect of awesome heroes (similar to the western Arthurian Tales or The Song of Roland) rather than the spiritual aspect.

[@Znwarp]

The game doesn’t even have any cool cultivation

[@SkorpioVenom]

Some Wuxias can be fun to read, though they're a little ruined by the main character always having god level plot armor (or else the book just ends lol), but I can't imagine them being a coherent game for westerners. Too slow paced, so so many cultural differences, and more tropes than you would think are possible.

[@Handlesaredumbm8]

The only good Xianxia/wuxia webnovels I've read were the ones that didn't dead ass focus on cultivation, but rather, the characters. The power trips were there, but they were the side dish. The vast amount of CN MC's apathetic to the people around them made me apathetic to the world they live in. Why this is so prolific in CN novels I'll never understand.

[@paulmahoney7619]

Even in this case, I would have to think that only being able to watch the cool things and not do the cool things must’ve been boring on both sides of the pacific.

[@miriamweller812]

It's cleary a high fantasy setting. As new character you are already special, an immortal = somehow who surpassed normal human limits, but this still means shit, because this goes far further. What's actually makes it interesting. You ARE special. but you are not the unique chosen one super sue the whole universe spins around.

[@mindassassin]

"Something exciting happened... I finished a pen." This writing is substantially better than that of the game.

[@alexreilly6121]

Well.....Not anymore, surely, since the pen is empty?

[@eon6274]

The small video coming up to show the lack of ink on the paper was really what got me

[@louieberg2942]

"To avoid embarrassing himself, he jumps towards the moon." Is a great line and well-delivered.

[@Christian-gr3gu]

That's what Id do

[@taffyadam6031]

THANKS FOR THE SPOILER

[@ForNoReason1000]

I laughed for a solid minute at that

[@TheDJMeyer85]

Best description of my high school days

[@viaxon6]

Perfect villain quote doesn't exis--- "They are headed for the grave. We might also do that later".

[@miriamweller812]

Very honest when it comes to game, no? I mean, how often do you have such a scene and then can just do something else instead? Hell, FF14 for example got it as part of the story itself. "You must stop that dragon (in the north)! Now travel to that country south, someone wants to talk there to you about something, whatever".

[@arashimiyazawa8165]

What's weird about the voice acting being so bad is that their pronunciations are all consistent with each other, so there was clearly active direction of the actors.

[@cheshirethehatter3213]

To be fair to this game, this is a really good representation of the wuxia/cultivator style of manhua/webtoon/story. It's utterly incomprehensible, throws around nonsense at every moment, people refuse to do any work when they can pass it off to a subordinate and nobody who's actually anybody shows up or does anything because they're all busy doing something else. To note on the classes being gender specific as well, though not really discussed in the video, in wuxia stories, men contain Yang energy, which is typically associated with fire, aggression and combat type abilities, while women contain Yin energy, which is usually more esoteric like healing, ice or sound. Normally in these types of stories, males can't learn Yin powers and vice-versa because it's incompatible with their energy. So while weird, it does make sense for the genre for classes to be gender locked.

[@yucheng4947]

That is pretty ancient concept which is rarely used in most of Chinese games now.Most mainstream idea is both male and female are balance between Yin and Yang. It is just one has more leaning to the other; but doesn't mean they are mutually exclusive to one and other. Moreover, this game doesn't play this rule either. For example, Summoner is learning Yang style spells while Reaper is Yin style spell which is part of their lore. However, neither of them is gender locked. (The Grandmasters for both of them are male ) Furthermore, Wu Zhao clan is pretty close with concept of Yin, yet they do contain both male and female. The only gender-locked classes are Floral Palace duo, but Yin and Yang is not the logic they split.

[@Theydas]

Chinese wuxia stories are in general - shit. It's not surprising game based on shit story is shit.

[@Lord_of_the_sixth_house]

"Now the bad guy shows up and attacks a tree, because that's a totally rational, evil thing to do" WoW writers: Seems legit

[@ryanweible9090]

to be fair, his bark is worse than his bite.

[@operationmisanthropia5831]

@@ryanweible9090 Burned Treebark smells pretty good and cant bite. Agree with you

[@strix4609]

*Melina from Elden Ring enters the chat*

[@marctaco2624]

Eying the Great Deku Tree in the distance

[@aitharel3009]

I mean what if the tree was some sort of guardian tree that kept evil spirits from infecting people and turning them insane to kill everyone? I'm sure there's a reason lost in the uh... interesting... English translations in the game.

[@rexss90]

To me, it sounds like this game would have actually benefited to just having all voice acting be in Chinese and had English subtitles throughout the game. It also seems this is what happens when you accidently miss a few 0s on your budget and spend way too much on advertisements before you realize how little money you actually have left.

[@leviathan1140]

There is that option You can choose Chinese voice action

[@Teddingtin]

The voice acting is just the icing on the cake, it's nothing compared to the other problems.

[@rexss90]

@@Teddingtin That's true, i just value a good story above most other things and it seems like this game basically has none lmao

[@BubbleBunnyy]

@@leviathan1140 yea but they shouldn’t have bothered with the English if this is how it would turn out.

[@Edigor100]

actually the advertisement and marketing for this game is terrible, thus the low player count still

[@Vesperitis]

"Have you ever gotten so angry you spoke Chinese?" Josh, my dude, swear words in certain Chinese dialects are the BEST.

[@ayhatelgbtqrst6020]

🤢

[@Nagataeatscorn]

@@ayhatelgbtqrst6020Your username and emoji use makes me think you believe you are the edgiest most cool being alive.

[@catscanhavelittleasalami]

@@ayhatelgbtqrst6020 😩🍆💦

[@KnightGamer724]

Firefly taught me that.

[@chrisben3]

This is the first "Worst MMO" Josh has reviewed that I actually want to try. The too funny voice acting, beautiful graphics and the fact the game isn't pay to win was enough to try it.

[@IndianTheNaked]

So how did it go?

[@chrisben3]

@@IndianTheNaked I play off and on still. The game sort of bogs down in the upper levels but it's always good for a bit of mindless fun.

[@catscanhavelittleasalami]

same, although I'd still play with the chinese va

[@MergedElement]

Wait the voice acting was real?😂

[@jakoby256]

It looks so beautiful but also painfully generic at the same time.

[@AuctorisMors]

"The more polished a game looks and the larger the marketing budget, the worse the game will be" - Ancient Chinese Proverb, lol.

[@motorolasamurai1635]

I call it FF13 syndrome

[@zakanyimen]

90% of the AAA games today.

[@lightningonlycommentsonce5824]

Eastern games in a nut shell. All glamor, no substance.

[@pete5516]

I literally got a mobile game ad in the middle of the video and didn’t notice it had changed

[@FlimsyRanger]

I am a voice actor that gets cast in these kinds of projects. Can say, they give you little or no direction, and around 80% of the info given is in Chinese. The people involved are mostly young actors that are extremely excited to be a part of a videogame, it is a really positive community :) If you want a primary source about eastern localization VO feel free to hit me up xD

[@laszlopohl3374]

Hey buddy! I'm quite intrigued by your comment's last section! I'm a Chinese-Hunarian mixblooded person, with atleast c1 level of knowledge of English and soon will receive my HSK5 certificate. If there's gonna be a new project, then I would gladly join it.

[@midorifox]

But it still doesn't really justify how lackluster the voice acting feels.

[@germansausage7310]

@@midorifox ofcourse I doesn't. But it explains thst most of the time the voice actors aren't at fault. Ots the company.

[@midorifox]

@@germansausage7310 ah,yes. that's also right

[@sindri1447]

@@germansausage7310 I think a really good voice actor could manage to deliver a line or two really well even if the director is dog shit. Of course the company should be thinking about doing stuff well with actual professionals but I digress.

[@alauram.6416]

"Why are the demons from Yorkshire" easily my favorite thing said in the entire video 😂

[@pdpMASTERP]

How did the Devs get away with this? Everyone involved in and in charge of the voice acting, translation and subtitles should never be allowed to work in localisation again

[@WallNutBreaker524]

Quality isn't really the standard for the western entertainment industry these days.

[@cartoonishidealism582]

​@@WallNutBreaker524 ...This wasn't made by the Western entertainment industry

[@Candlemancer]

​@@cartoonishidealism582 The localisation clearly wasn't done by the Chinese developer though. This is a western company either doing the absolute bare minimum or actively mocking the media they're being paid to translate because they know the Chinese company can't tell or won't care.

[@SpellboundTutor]

"The classes are genderlocked and you have access to the 3 genders: Man, Woman, and Small Girl." If I had a nickel every time I saw an Eastern developed MMO that could fit this exact description, I swear to god.

[@mramisuzuki6962]

I’m sadden when Loli is removed for Loli-furry.

[@Jinny-Wa]

@@mramisuzuki6962 yes

[@Negritis]

genderlock only happens with those 3 classes tho, and even the chinese original devs agree it was a mistake

[@SpellboundTutor]

@@Negritis I'd say "Fair enough" and "I understand" if it didn't keep happening. Consistently. With the obscene majority of MMOs from that region. Blade and Soul Black Desert Online Lost Ark Tera MapleStory Bless Online / Unleashed And those are the ones that, as far as I know, are still in operation along with this game. And it's hardly an exhaustive list. And feel free to make any number of excuses defending the choices made. Contrived lore reasons invented by the same developers making these choices, cutting developmental cost, using hetero sex appeal to sell their game in an oversaturated market, doesn't matter. But at the end of the day, it has been done so much by this specific region of the market that it's become a meme and it's going to be hard to wash that stink off. For me to have any interest in any MMO from that region, the very first thing I have to check is, granted, the MTX abuse, but the second thing is if there's gender locking and how bad it is. Because it's a massive problem.

[@Negritis]

@@SpellboundTutor I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying that out if 8(7 if we say the 2 warrior is one) classes only 3 (1) has gender lock I'm not a fan of it either, but Josh did disservice to the game with saying it's gender locked implying a full lock which isn't true The new class also won't be locked afaik

[@savagex378]

"Have you every get so angry you spoke chinese?" I'm fairly certain most chinese parents do that to their kids. My mother can vouch for that lmao

[@raijuko]

I dunno, if I get angry enough I short out and speak a language that definitely isn't english. I mean... Engrish. My Engrish racks disaprine if upset.

[@ryanisbelle6107]

Happens all the time in Firefly!

[@rhyspatterson679]

I have a friend who used to get mad and speak......whatever the voice actor of Amy Wong from futurerama spoke when mad. He just literally quoted her outbursts verbatim. He had a perfect memory for sound and did voice acting. His kids told me they knew they were introuble when their 50 year old very Irish father started to sound like a 20 something Chinese woman. To be clear he got mad and started speaking a language he doesn't understand but would be understood by a true speaker of the language......both impressive and kinda dumb to put that much effort in to that lol

[@Karlach_]

@@geoffok Chinese should be a language

[@gtPacheko]

@@geoffok it's a language group, but you can still say you speak Chinese. Be that Fuzhounese, Cantonese, Mandarin, etc

[@nynms203]

1:14 I speak Chinese. It still sounds like a high school drama club trying to out-act each other.

[@gh0rochi363]

Mandarin or Cantonese?

[@Sibenice100]

I played a bunch of this game at launch and really enjoyed it, mainly because of the visuals. I also played the game with fully Chinese voices and relied on the subs to get everything, it's a lot better that way, unfortunately. I agree with pretty much everything you said here, there's a reason I'm not still playing. But I did want to point out one thing you said that was wrong. In the first dungeon it changes your visuals, not your gear. It's a purely cosmetic thing. I still hated that part of the dungeon, especially since I picked up a few costumes and those get overridden as well. But you do go through it using the equipment you have earned unlike what you said. Also, it is the only dungeon in the game that does this. Still a really bad way to introduce players to dungeons because it doesn't just change your gear visuals, but your face as well, and in a game where visuals are the main selling point... That seems like a bad idea.

[@tioalra6746]

Game: "he grabs his shoulder" Josh: "if you write it out, it should be a book." game: gives you books to read Josh: "... alright"

[@a5c0]

I was watching this on my laptop and when you said, "I talk to this character's boobs..." my wife looked up from her Switch and then we both started laughing when you called her out on it. Thank you for that moment, Josh. :)

[@eastbow6053]

what min? xD

[@StarboyXL9]

Lucky guy married to a woman of culture

[@LimitedInfinity9]

@@eastbow6053 it's at 24:01

[@AnimeSquirrel]

I always expect it, but he always gets me with it.

[@Realtime1501]

Is your wife single?

[@Eguzky]

This MMO plays like a D&D campaign I was in, years ago; The DM was so scared we'd win any boss fight against her precious boss NPCs that **every boss fight** had excuses and railroaded mechanics to sideline us. Then we got to sit back and listen to her loving describe some other NPC she made coming in to save us, every time. It was the equivalent of a combat cinematic for D&D. At one point, we told her we were fighting the boss ourselves, or quitting. We ended up winning and, as I am about to kill the biss (Who was a minion to the real Big BNad, not even the Big Bad himself); She vetoed it. Just 'No, you find you can't kill him. Your body won't move.' Then the minion (It was not his turn yet): Knocked me out (No save allowed), cast a spell that pushed the party 50 feet away (No saves allowed), and teleported away. All in the same round of combat, while it was not his turn. You stopped playing in that campaign.

[@crystalcortexx]

JOSH KILLED THIS MMO

[@MadDead]

The overlaping audio is actually a feature to get you through the story even faster

[@BaghNakh1]

This just shows that the "big L" on the dev company are the team charged with the audio and sound design of the game. They can't even edit a take from a VA, probably the VA says the line a couple of times so sound engineers edit and cut-off the parts they don't want and keep the lines that fit the best, instead they just put the entire unedited audio file into the game. You can see that this isn't the only audio issue with the game, so yea, VA aren't exactly the best for sure but the sound design team made it 100 times worse.

[@LordRaven256]

The animations are timed for the original Chinese audio clip length which are usually faster than English. So instead of adjusting either the animation length or matching the audio timing they just replaced the audio files. This is what happens :)

[@i_am_the_monkey_king]

@@LordRaven256 That actually make sense~ Thank you! So, if anyone wants to play this game. They should just stick to playing it in original audio.

[@DeimosSK]

Damn, FFXIV could have used this feature :D

[@motxmod]

The overlapping cutscene dialogue is most likely due to the lines being shorter in Chinese but the cues for them not being adjusted to compensate for the new length.

[@gothgirlfan93]

Yea I was gonna comment the same thing. Can tell especially when they switch to Chinese after saying the same thing in English you can tell how quick it is comparatively

[@Ataman]

Same for the overlapping GUI buttons I bet. They're bigger then originally programmed due to english using more letters. (I mean, you COULD program your GUI in a way that adapts dynamically to the buttons content but looks like the budget for that went to marketing).

[@Bloodfetus]

Sounded like someone spam skipping through dialog prompts 😂

[@dragunityx12]

@@facepalmization2841 Nope, I'm a Hindu nationalist and I disagree.

[@unbearifiedbear1885]

🍻

[@alexgac1801]

I remember the one time I finished a pen. It felt amazing. I looked back at all the ink I had poured over many notebooks. Years of constant writing and impeccable reporting. Truly, one of the greatest achievements of my life. You must be proud.

[@AceTriggerz]

One big problem I have with a lot of chinese wuxia themes (anime, manhua and games) is there is often this idea of, "special people are special and ordinary people are not, unless they were but it was somehow hidden, so technically they were special all the time." I'm from Taiwan, and this kind of thinking seems kind of insidious to me. Almost like they want people to think people who are well off were always chosen to be special etc, and the normal peeps can just be background characters in their own lives.

[@SoanFable]

Um yes, You just explained how life works..

[@Jokoko2828]

Welcome to real life? Rich people spend more in a day than you'll earn in your life because the universe ain't fair and never will be.

[@imperiallarch7610]

@@Jokoko2828 But it's not because they're special. They're made of the same stuff as the rest of us. They're only wealthy by circumstance. The trope here is that there are "special people" who *really are* different from ordinary folks, and that's not true in real life at all.

[@RedexTwo]

I get what you mean.

[@Thelegoterrapin]

@@imperiallarch7610they aren’t different because they’re special, they’re special because they’re different. Being wealthy is the thing that sets them apart.

[@ProfiteerProphet]

I loved the "I will not accept gifts from enemies!" "You will" "Understandable, have a nice day"

[@sweatyslapfight7900]

That part made me laugh so much. It was essentially the *charisma 100* meme but played straight

[@webbowser8834]

Like, I get the intent here. They clearly wanted to make it clear that bad guy was using compulsion magic to make other guy take the evil sword and be evil. Sure, whatever. It just... wasn't really sold all that well.

[@ProfiteerProphet]

@@webbowser8834 Yeah, but it was edited and voiced incredibly poorly. Like, they could have made it at least seem like the other guy was struggling, put some effect in the "you will" to have a "dark powers" effect.

[@webbowser8834]

@@ProfiteerProphet Yeah, no arguments there.

[@tekelupharsin4426]

It sounded like some NPC dialogue from Oblivion

[@ashleylightheart126]

16:07 Josh: Can everyone fly the moment it suits the plot?! Me: According to every modern chinese martial arts/sword fighting show. Yes.

[@lugulushackulus5223]

Never talk to me or my chinese shows/novels/donghua/Manhuas ever again

[@dqpopo9794]

Llpppppppppp

[@dqpopo9794]

Llpppppppppp

[@TheKuroArisu]

@@lugulushackulus5223 Keep my chinese shows/novels/donghua/Manhuas out of your fking mouth! - says Will Smith

[@LeonesAce]

Every cultivation story: Yes.

[@gazeboist4535]

What if you did the whole descriptions-of-actions-in-text thing but then also animated really detailed scenes where they just do something different. Like the narration says "he slaps you on the shoulder" and instead you two shake hands. I feel like you could have a lot of fun with that as a designer.

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

15:28 I finally figured out what is going on. They not only spent 5 bucks on the dub people but the translation from Chinese is literal. That is the reason Baiqian says "we can't control that guy anymore!"

[@purplefreedom1631]

Quest: "grab healing herbs that are only 10ft away" Me: "oh, is this lost ark?"

[@drunicks8347]

Lmao you nailed it

[@drunicks8347]

Except for the fact that your character is actually shown doing things a main character does XD

[@FNLNFNLN]

"Go tell these people to do this thing" _Turns slightly to the left to target NPC_ You sure you need my help with this one?

[@gotdangedcommiesitellyahwa6298]

"OH, I dropped my medicine! Can you fetch it for me?" *Presses G* "OH Thank you kind sir! You're a hero!"

[@ladylark10884]

@@gotdangedcommiesitellyahwa6298 lmaooo i love lost ark but that's always annoying 💀

[@Xenoxic]

"Then this voice actor delivers his lines with so little energy if he were any more relaxed he would be medicly dead." This line made me laugh so hard i almost died

[@Biouke]

It made me sad because he pretty much described how French VA have sounded like these past 15 years when subbing anime D:

[@Grandmastergav86]

@@Biouke Is there anyone under the age of 30 who doesn't watch Anime? I feel like these people are the victims of MK Ultra, I fail to see the appeal.

[@raijuko]

What's funny is that particular clip, had average kind of OKAY level voice acting. It sounded like a character at least, instead of 1970s Kung fu voice dubs

[@13thKingMu]

@@Grandmastergav86 while anime is really big in Asia like One piece considered a kids show in there. It doesn't make much a impact in western(because their trending is currently tiktok or some sh*t) and even they did,they usually watch by themselves and don't want to share to their family.

[@DonYagamoth]

The voice acting layering over eachother like this reminds me a lot of when I visited a supermarket in Japan, where they had little speakers all over the place to advertise all sorts of products. Sensory overload - but it seemed normal to everyone else °-°;

[@runakovacs4759]

Honestly pretty good simulation what it's like if you got a sensory processing disorder lmao. Being in public can be like that for me.

[@michaelcalvin42]

The rating out of 10 for this one absolutely killed me. This was a great episode all around.

[@sophomorehat]

I opened Josh's Twitch in the background while I was watching this because he popped into the premiere chat to say he'd be going live soon. It started autoplaying the vod from his last stream. It took me a good few minutes to realise the two overlapping Josh voices weren't just a joke about this game's sound balancing.

[@bushy9780]

Your comment probably has more plot than SOLO.

[@Dead_Weight21]

nah, it does at the end, so the joke still stands

[@Ch1l1C0nCarnag3]

The fact I started reading this comment a couple seconds before he did that joke at the end just makes this even better.

[@AzureRoxe]

Let me remind everyone of something. We pretty much had to BEG the devs to let us change to the original Chinese language because, originally, it was going to only have English for our version and ABSOLUTELY NO ONE WANTED IT.

[@evilherodiamondcat]

That's surprising. You'd think that would have been an option by default.

[@heavenly2k]

What do you mean? Doesn't everyone love to hear people with Shakespearean accents recorded on a Motorola phone in their Eastern Fantasy MMO?

[@sperera6835]

man i was wondering if orginal Audio was available, may still pick this up then.

[@Youboremenow]

Are there any mods or anything that make the story coherent (For non chinese linguists)? I do have a soft spot for wuxia stories, and while the cutscenes did it no favour I can see that world building in this mmo might be kinda good.

[@cyryl3827]

@@Youboremenow It has subtitles... they will be at a similar level of quality to 99% of wuxia you read. The story is also around the quality of 99% of wuxia you read. A solid "why"/10.

[@killerwife]

Tinfoil hat theory: The reason they did not bugfix, is because they were forbidden to do a more intrusive cash shop. Totally would expect such petty behaviour.

[@jetsnacko]

I’ve played quite a bit of this game! You said this game is for people who are “digital tourists” or “cutscene enjoyers”. I am both of those. (Yes. I AM a gw2 player.) I’m also a casual xianxia fan, who… cannot speak a word of Chinese. I’ve suffered through some BAD localizations, and this is… one of the worst I’ve seen. I enjoyed my time with it, because I burned a bit of cash to make my handful of characters look pretty- I am big into developing characters and backstory and making them look like they do in my head (it’s uh… a bit of a problem. I have 50 characters in gw2.) And, the best decision I made, by FAR… was to switch the voice lines to Chinese. Which I did within three minutes of booting up the game. Do I know what they’re saying? Nope. Do I understand the plot? Only through previous knowledge of xianxia tropes and a VERY strong suspension of disbelief. But it sounds a LOT better. Overall, I definitely had a better time than you did, but I agree wholeheartedly with the review. Great watch!

[@SashenkaKun]

"...and make everyone in the background start paying attention." Well played, Strife. You win this round.

[@silverdraco84]

Yup.

[@nero93Memixzes]

you guys dont watch josh on your secound monitor? you'd see the boobs before anything else!

[@Stevarious]

Yeah, he got me good.

[@Calebk504]

I definitely had to contemplate my decisions in life right after this because i was very distracted, but that got me back quick.

[@Chronomatrix]

Whenever I see games like this I feel really bad for the 3D artists who've spent thousands of hours carefully modelling, texturing and building the world, having no say on how the game should play.

[@chrism1518]

No reason to feel bad, they got paid for their work.

[@MrInsiipid]

I'd only feel bad for them because their work got butchered in this localization. From what I know the game was well received and enjoyed where it was made.

[@alpha_9997]

@@MrInsiipid the Chinese voice acting isn’t nearly as bad. And the sound is probably much better. I think the reason why there is so much overlap is because the actual Chinese voice lines were shorter, so when they put in the English voice lines, they were to long.

[@SkorpioVenom]

@@alpha_9997 Yeah, the book style that the game is based on have the same problem. What is one or two sentences in chinese becomes a page long paragraph in english.

[@alpha_9997]

@@SkorpioVenom yeah… sometimes translations don’t go so well…

[@jpkuro5688]

The Line Furrys and Gene-Stealers killed me XD Also for the non-sensical Plot, if you have read enough Wuxia Novels or Xianxia Novel this Plot line is as common as the European "Aktion hero go shoot guys" or any other well known cliche plot line. It was honestly neither suprising nor new in any shape way or form. The way they just throw stuff at you is like they expect you to know all the Wuxia terms and tropes already.

[@tj-co9go]

Sounds like the most generic possible Wuxia storyline, I agree

[@kami-oshi.kronii]

It's kind of sad, because I feel like there was a lot of potential for a decent game, maybe even a good game, but some people along the corporate chain dropped the ball or made some whacky decisions. I bought this on Steam when it first came out and I don't even think I played a second day before uinstalling and never touching again T_T Love this series by the way, been enjoying it while semi-afk horse training in BDO on a lazy Sunday. Cheers Josh! omg your "out of 10" outro was so good for this one I literally laughed out loud.

[@hentainin87]

"you ever been so angry, you just spoke chinese?" I felt that 😂

[@Kairos_Akuma]

This whole thing is one big "Ai-jaaa" moment oLo xD

[@TarisSinclair]

(literally every character in Firefly): 青蛙操的流氓

[@falcontomto]

no matter how angry I am, I'd never been so angry that I just speak my native language. my enemies shall know my wrath.

[@MasterMarf]

"the furries have joint up with the genestealers" damn, that's some nightmare stuff even the chaos gods have nightmares about.

[@dustinnabil798]

Slaneesh Cultist 🤝 Genestealer Hating SOLO

[@YoloSadBoy]

I cried when Josh said "We can devour the gods together" 😭😭 33:04

[@NamikazeH]

God SOLO. I played the closed beta and then for a good chunk of a year after the release, and the most memorable thing for me was the utter mindbreak I experienced as the game itself just broke the concept of translation itself. This is coming from someone who regularly Google translates Chinese novels. It got so bad that I was screenshotting every line of dialogue because I was in stitches from howling too hard. There were multiple instances where *people's names* in *the name box* got translated. To different degrees. I remember going back to Cloudrise to talk to Lushu Zidu (whose name is occasionally partially translated to Lushu Purple City) and Kunwuzi (whose name is occasionally accidentally partly Japanese-read...? to Kungozi. I have no idea how) to unlock Baxian area. And. I was greeted with this: "(Suddenly discouraged) Even you help he ...Well, if you can please take out the Wuxianzhan on the top of Sendaitai and drink a sip of the Xia Niu, I'm afraid there is still a glimmer of life." The devs asked for people to "be respectful" when bringing forward criticisms but frankly for a game that I had to pay to play, the fact that this level of """"translation""" that makes less sense to read in "English" than in Chinese is in of itself disrespectful-- and I can't even read Chinese. Actually, I have the game to thank for my better Chinese now, because I WAS invested enough to just look up the original Chinese texts to better understand the lore. That said, now that the game is dead, I wish there's a game with similar aesthetic and style to fill the void... I really do adore the atmosphere, though I wished there were places for me to actually appreciate the gorgeous areas without always attracting mobs.

[@dominicmanester8125]

The intro cutscene voice acting wasn't that bad, it's mediocre at worst. Perfectly serviceable compared to the rest of the voice acting.

[@_Stefo]

Im srry but a women character that is voice acted by a man who didn't even wanted to try a high pitched voice to remotely sound like a women? That is quite bad unless you have an even worse example than this 😂

[@Vivi_Strike]

@@_Stefo im pretty sure he meant the part with the Narrator doing dialogue for the backstory of the lore.

[@_Sage967_]

sometimes a thing only seems mediocre compared to the human rights violations in their proximity

[@ashharkausar413]

I thought it was decent.

[@belstar1128]

@@_Stefo Like the polish movie dubs i keep getting when i pirate a movie lol.

[@nigelwillaert3617]

when this game came out 2 weeks prior i lost my left tumb and index finger, one of my buddy's bought this game for me to cheer me up, i no lived like mad the first the 2 months i was in the top 100, it gave such a rush. during that time period i was pretty depresed lost my job, felt worthless thought about suicide alot those days,couldn't use my left hand anymore but this game gave me new friends and some of them helped me see the bigger picture again, i quit the game and came outside again this game saved me in a weird way.

[@chiefofthesky]

i’m honestly glad you were able to make it through all that. i’d say that alone makes this decidedly *not* the worst MMO ever.

[@imsleepy6211]

It’s amazing how sometimes mmos have that affect. I’ve been there, different causes though. Once you get past the struggle a bit you lose desire to play the game

[@Toshi3.71]

So your friend saw that you lost a thumb and and index finger and said " hey let me see how well you can still use WASD" Your friend's a dick lol...glad you pulled through though

[@nigelwillaert3617]

@@Toshi3.71 i get what you mean, i was afraid to use my hand it helped cross certain barriers in my head, funny enough you learn pretty fast to cope with missing fingers. At first i was also like wtf why you giving me an mmo for dipshit :p

[@lesmortimers4791]

I Hope You’re doing much better today, friend!

[@tomislavko1]

As a player that played at launch until the first raid released, I can tell you, later down the line, the game does get a bit more difficult in terms of open world content, the story stays confusing as all hell, the voice acting stays the same, and there is many many other female npcs with male voices. The raid content is... fine, it wasn't some mega giga experience, but was far from bad, it took my guild a couple attempts for each boss except the last one it was an enrage timer boss that we just needed to push harder dps for and it took time to practice out when we want to pop our cds for what phases and when we can do good dmg as it became a bullet hell at some points and dps became secondary to survival, but some big cooldowns would pop at that same time. the housing, crafting, pets, mounts and all that seems to be just flair in terms of progression, pve and pvp gear in the endgame was separate from what i can remember and was grinded in similar fashion to wow with you spamming rbg to obtain currency and gear boxes. All in all it wasn't an ultra bad experience, but it didn't really excel at anything other than perhaps doing combat a bit better than it's competition in terms of pvp balance.

[@qriist1850]

Props to Mengbo for actually matching his subtitle lines.

[@ArcticWolfOfficial]

The fact that he never breaks out into a laugh or even a giggle while explaining any of this shit is a super power

[@xaviermm5506]

Lmao

[@lukasmisanthrop8557]

I dont think its all one take :D I think his videos might be edited and cut together but what do i know right

[@ArcticWolfOfficial]

Even during the editing though lol

[@jamaigar]

We need some bloopers :D

[@zeening]

no that's just called having a good taste in humor

[@SleepingDragon1st]

You know what, I pre-ordered this, then before launch refunded it to purchase at a later date. During the refund, the support team said "Once you refund you wont be able to rebuy the game", I lol'd and said okay that's fine. I think support team was helping a homie out.

[@sangan7641]

lmao, legends

[@Vertraic]

As a reader of the genre this game is imitating, I find your comment about bloated skill sets rather amusing, as I have read SEVERAL stories where the MC makes that exact point: It is better to train 2-4 skills/techniques to perfection, than to just KNOW 30+ techniques. Of course on the other end you have the stories where the MC has so many techniques in his brain that he spends a week sorting through them what to teach when someone asks for help improving... lol. Those are usually cases where the MC was some millions of years old superpower who was betrayed and killed by his supposed friends/disciples and reincarnated into the body of some recently killed 14 year old with a physical problem that makes it 'impossible' to gain strength, but is actually some rare super powerful special physique that was just unknown at the low level the area he was reborn in was at, but since the MC knows all the special super secret training techniques it will allow him to become the strongest and grow to become a GOD! And yeah, those almost ALWAYS start off with the MC in the weakest city, of the weakest county, of the weakest country, of the weakest empire, of the weakest region, of the weakest continent, of the weakest planet, of the weakest realm:D So of COURSE the MC has to bring EACH of those up to become the strongest of that group instead by providing them the knowledge he gained while being a multiversal overlord, lol. And WOW I did not expect to suddenly find I had written a short essay...

[@KnightGamer724]

Okay, so everytime I look into Wuxia, I always end up finding stuff like you're mentioning and end up not wanting to try... But I really want to. It looks really cool and I want more swords and magic-esque fantasy stuff to try. Especially with this game having the Spellsword class, which is a combination of everything I've ever liked. What Wuxia stuff would you recommend? What should I know going in?

[@Vertraic]

@@KnightGamer724 Yeah, there are a LOT of garbage ones. The ones I hear recommended most often are "Coiling Dragon" and "I Shall Seal the Heavens" (which I HATED the ending for...) If you DO decide to get into them, be prepared for LONG stories, as it is rare for them to end before chapter 7-800, and not uncommon to have 2-3000 chapters, with one I am aware of being at over 8400 chapters and still going. I have read quite a few that I STARTED OUT enjoying, but all too often the main character starts doing the exact same crap or WORSE than the villain he started his journey to defeat. It is VERY common for the MC to end up believing people of a lower level are not worth worrying about, and PARTICULARLY if they happen to be another race/species. Also, in the same vein, Chinese stories are frequently quite xenophobic... Now of the ones I made it to the end of, I would recommend: For comedy/comedic elements, "World of Cultivation" did not leave a bad taste in my mouth, and "The Strongest Gene" was a more pseudo-science version of cultivation. "Archean Eon Art" and "Wu Dong Qian Kun" and "Martial World" are more traditional Cultivation novels, and as long as you don't read the extras for WDQK the ending is not bad (Author started to write and epilogue basically then dropped it before finishing,) but AEA ends.... Early it feels like, and the first half of the story can get kind of dark. Edit: And watch out for the translation quality... Some of them are quite well done, but the VAST majority of even paid web translations are (hopefully) edited Machine Translations, which can get power levels, names, and pronouns COMPLETELY wrong. (I read one that managed to call a single character by SEVEN DIFFERENT NAMES in a single chapter...) Lastly, if in the first couple chapters it starts talking about 'evil capitalists' you probably shouldn't bother with that one:D

[@WaldfeeGunter]

I feel I can add here something. I was hopelessly addicted on release, spend way too much money on cosmetics and leveled 3 characters over about two months of gameplay. I skipped the cutscenes and texts on all 3 characters, because that first cutscene already bored me to death, but my god I loved the combat, the five dungeons have a hard mode where, if you clear the bosses in a certain time, a secret, very demanding boss spawns. There was one raid at the time for up to four groups i believe. BUT normal mode rewards were only available once per day and hard mode/raid rewards once a WEEK. Soon they released an eventdungeon where you could enter once a day which was a minigame like bomberman or pvp snake. Yes snake. So besides daily chores like fishing and playing cards, you had 6 dungeons a day and 6 "hard instances" a week. all of which played amazing and needed attention and focus, but there was little to do. They also took forever to release actual content like new dungeons. My entire guild had max gear (not counting that +3 rng bullshit where you could drop better gear that had a little better stats) within the 2nd month of launch. We quit soon after because we found nothing new to do, yes hardmode was awesome but you can only do so many weekly dungeons (mind you, it took about half an hour for each of the 5 dungeons) before you find a more stimulating game (and normal mode became a walkthrough somewhere along the line). There is also alot of exploring, where you find "hidden treasures" like a wooden hairpin on a wooden bench you have to click on, a ring inside a shoe on a shelf and an alcohol bottle in tall grass. or the hunting quests for evil spirits which have no reward except for the daily/weekly challenge and are nowhere near a normal dungeon in difficulty. tl;dr amazing dungeons and in theory endgame content, but so little and timelocked actual content that SOLO was dropped soon after launch, haven't revisited it ever since. Just wait until the endgame and it gets good...totally, trust me 100% Also i think the standard mount has 70 or 80% movespeed, but dont quote me on that

[@dt9827]

"Why was it not the hottest new MMO?" *shows the horrific voice acting* I fail to see how this is a downside.

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

It's like dynasty warriors

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

If they'd played their cards right they could've done a game that plays like the old Hong Kong martial arts movies. Not the best translation, but decent and fun. But that is not what they did.

[@kuro9410_ilust]

voice acting do make a difference and can be a make or break for some people and first impressions MATTERS

[@DoveAlexa]

@@kuro9410_ilust //woosh

[@foreverl.o.t.u.s.]

they should double down and make it like ghost stories

[@TiddyTwyster]

"I have severely damaged the Lunar Crown Tree. Father's mission was already completed. Those people are headed straight into their own graves. We could also do that _later! :)"_ I give this game a bad qi out of 10 To be honest if they doubled down on the goofy dub it would probably improve things a lot, how many _intentionally_ comedy centered MMOs can you think of?

[@TheAwesomeNatta]

It'd certainly be better than what it is now indeed lol. The only mmo with comedy as one of their selling points I can remember is is Wildstar but its long gone now :(

[@PoptartParasol]

They should take pointers from the Japanese. They are great at doubling down on the goofy and cranking it up to 11. Yakuza being one game I can think of off the top of my head

[@nat040496]

It's a shame how genuinely gorgeous this game is visually. One of the best looking MMOs I've ever seen when it comes to environments.

[@cutiechocoberry]

The voice acting sounds like a bunch of teenagers LARPing.

[@Khilkhameth]

I was fully prepared for 'have a great day' to be spoken in Chinese, with a subtitle informing me that Josh Strife Hayes drinks from his cup.

[@Tall_Order]

I remember a time when MMOs were first starting to be voice acted, and a lot of the dialogue you still had to read because they didn't pay enough voice actors. But then I hear this game where they got so many of them talking at the same time. We've gone full circle. I guess I prefer quality over quantity.

[@ImaginaryAlchemist]

I also would prefer quality. I'm okay with voice acting only being in cutscenes and important moments if it's well done. Bad voice acting through the whole game can ruin it, I'd rather just read walls of text

[@Tall_Order]

@@ImaginaryAlchemist Even in the early days i wished voiced NPCs would shut up lol. I remember launch week of EQ2, roaming through the city of Qeynos hearing NPCs shouting through the walls of their respective buildings. I still have what they shout stuck in my head 'MY WIFE MAKES THESE DELICIOUS CRUNCHIES! I WANT MY CRUNCHIES!" lol

[@rhyspatterson679]

I started with EQ and like so many I just wanted Fippy Darkpaw to speak out his reincarnation number but knew I would get tired of the repetitive nature soon if they actually did that. I went from no voice acting to now and I really like quality acting from key characters and little to no voices from background npcs especially In hub towns

[@Sunari]

16:10 really got me, happy to have experienced that for the great laugh that it was. As to the voiced lines I can't help but feel like they took voice clips from the internet and put them over some characters like that mini boss in the dungeon. For ambient dialogue I think it's a great touch to a game, but they do need to time it and also localize it to an area around the character so it doesn't feel like they have you surrounded and yelling at you.

[@limmel3588]

Well, as of today, June 1st, they are officially shutting down the servers on June 30th. Pathetic, but classic Gameforge

[@deusgamer4922]

17:48 - “they are already headed to their graves. We should do that too later!” hahahahahahhahahaa oml did the voice actors become self aware?? Seriously this script is like the Oblivion NPCs became semi-sentient, read a whole bunch of google translated Chinese literature, and then randomly wrote up a game based solely on that. amazing

[@viddeliten]

Also it said something was successfully accomplished (hurting the deku tree?) but the father's quest was already done. Was that why they wanted to die? I was so confused! 😂

[@hazukichanx408]

When the dude interrupts the elder-ish seeming guy by yelling "Grandmaster!" while he's talking (around 20:26), I just want the guy to go "Don't interrupt!" and maybe slap him. I get that the timing must have matched with the original audio, but yeah... someone on the dub team obviously needed to be given control of the dialogue timing, and wasn't.

[@Luneward]

@@hazukichanx408 Yeah, if you play any other game with lip sync to chinese audio you'll see chinese dialogue is usually a fair amount shorter in technical length.

[@fonesrphunny7242]

Honestly, I don't think your idea is too far off from reality.

[@Poldovico]

I saw a mudcrab the other day. Nasty little creatures.

[@stolarjm]

It's startling to think that this game may have actually done better in sales and player retention if they had removed the voiceovers in their entirety.

[@WallNutBreaker524]

True.

[@princesszelda1997]

As a person who has a ton of trouble with processing multiple conversations at once, this sounds painfully realistic to me

[@TrippleN]

And now the game is shutting down June 30th 2023.

[@Captain_Hapton]

"Have you ever been so angry you just suddenly spoke Chinese?" What, you think I haven't seen Firefly?

[@hazukichanx408]

*_Obligatory angry Amy Wong chinese catchphrase from Futurama_*

[@loupinconnu]

"I'm now having a conversation with this characters boobs making everyone who was listening in the background pay attention now." Never been so called out in my life.

[@StarboyXL9]

Is it being called out if you embrace it?

[@trevrah]

Same

[@kerianhalcyon2769]

I do like that term, "Pay for advantage" as opposed to "pay to win." To me, pay to win implies you're being given gear that's better than what you can find naturally in the game (or have to otherwise grind hours for because the drop rate is so low) or are being given a token that instantly makes you max level the moment you hit checkout. By contrast, I rarely consider experience boosters as pay to win, you're just shortening leveling time which means less grinding (and nobody actually likes grinding, it's a stupid system that needs to not be part of the main leveling in any RPG, regardless of player count). You definitely are being given an advantage by having them, but the primary advantage you're having over someone who doesn't use them is time spent from point A to point B, and so long as that time spent is greater than 0 you're still expected to play the game like everyone else.

[@StudlyHunk]

I also noticed that every time a dialog scene come up the character's clothing will shakes violently like it was just loaded into the scene.

[@daquinz]

Devs: "We made an mmorpg with no pay to win! You're welcome." Players: "Awesome! Does it have good storywriting?" Devs: "No... but lots of cutscenes!" Players: "Oh, ok, but is the voice acting decent?" Devs: "Oh god no." Players: "Hmm, how's the combat?" Devs: "You one-hit bosses." Players: "...and the quests?" Devs: "You'll get to fetch stuff, and it's only 10 feet away!"

[@suiker1224]

Its Gameforge not the devs, the devs had nothing to do with the translations, it was Gameforge's job to do it

[@daquinz]

@@suiker1224 Still green-lighted by the devs. Clearly shows they didn't put much effort or budget into ensuring quality in that department.

[@TG-ge1oh]

@@suiker1224 The quests and combats were done by the devs though. They clearly did not test the end-product before shipping it.

[@Chronoic]

Not the only MMO that has a fetch quest where the items are 10 feet away, thats the trope of all MMO. Except for one, New World, where they make you walk all the way to the other side of the map to fetch something to come back and then go all the way back to get the item that was next to the item you just fetch them.

[@mrokhaos8269]

@@suiker1224 No matter who to blame. If a game can't even get translation and UI adaptive right. Do you still think they actually care about the game..........and These game company are mega rich asses. They literally can just smash money to make everything works

[@jdperry1917]

If I'm ever rich enough to buy Gameforge I am replacing every team leader, manager, etc then rebuilding all these games that deserved so much better.

[@heavenly2k]

I like your thinking.

[@belstar1128]

Game forge is the worst thing the Germans have ever done.

[@paulmahoney7619]

There is something INCREDIBLY funny about that scene in the opening where a small Chinese woman talks in the voice of a 25-year-old man with a slight Irish brogue.

[@danvarx]

I'm sorry you had to go through that and thank you for this. Such a waste, wonder how much they actually spent on this.

[@Smellypuce]

I feel like Gameforge will see this financial failure as affirmation that p2w is the only profitable model instead of realizing that this game failed because of poor execution. Plenty of people will pay loads for only cosmetics if the core game is actually good. Just look at Path of Exile. Edit: To be fair, PoE's stash tabs are debatably p2w.

[@aristedes9449]

I'm fully convinced they torpedoed the game on purpose specifically for this reason, the same way Disney sabotaged Treasure Planet because the animation techniques used to make it were high-effort and expensive.

[@SapiaNt0mata]

1 person spent $700,000 on Lost Ark in Korean version. how many players in PoE have to spend money to reach this number? to do 1 upgrade after +20 = $30 and the chance to succeed is 3-1.5% and you have 6 parts of gear to upgrade. Genshin Impact made $1 billion from microtransactions in around 6 months. GTA 5 also make billions per year. sure in PoE players pay loads of money for cosmetics, but in p2w they spend unfathomable amount of money. guess which 1 the developer will choose to make money?

[@hovsep56]

@@SapiaNt0mata the amount spent doesn't mean a thing, p2w is p2w. if i had to spend one cent to get access to the strongest gear in the gear immediately it's p2w. the only reason a person would spend alot of money on something is because the person likes the game.

[@SapiaNt0mata]

@@hovsep56 you missed the point. the amount of money players spend does matter. someone spent $4,000 at once to open the lootboxes of Genshin Impact. how many people have to buy cosmetics to reach $4,000 that 1 player spent with 1 time spending? that's the point for the amount. someone that spends $700,000 means he/she likes the game, otherwise that person wouldn't spend even $1

[@hovsep56]

@@SapiaNt0mata it does not matter at all, a game can be cheap and still be p2w hence my example of paying one cent to get the strongest gear in the game. you still PAID a amount to win. the size don't matter. it's called p2w not pay x amount to win

[@KurodoDragon]

18:00 reminds me of one of the first quests in Blade & Soul where a healer says one of his patients will be paralyzed for life because he doesn't have the medicine he needs and no one is available to help. But the medicine is obtained by running to the beach less than 200 feet away.

[@sachinsaisenarine79]

24:08 ok fine u got me here u go.

[@gundampharmacist7348]

JOSH YOU DID IT AGAIN~ :D

[@rhyspatterson679]

Its clear the animation was timed for the original voice actors and they didnt go back with the dub to retime anything. Its the reason a lot of chinese games just dont get western dubbing because the time span for speech over the amount of information is RADICALLY different.

[@kiddhkane]

Nothing but excuses.

[@raijuko]

A lot of people fail to notice this, so they just complain, and that's understandable. But, people also are lazy and don't read. It's much more immersive to just use native voice settings and read subtitles, if you can watch anime with subs (which you should, if you don't your a heathen) you can easily over look 70% of the complaints in this video lol

[@rhyspatterson679]

I prefer subs 90% of the time and started MMOs with evrrquest so issues with text here. I went to school for multimedia and game design so oh this game was handled brings up a lot of red flags. Instead of a planned out localization its like they just had an AI try to split the difference between the two

[@Dejavuproned8]

@@raijuko BS excuse for their laziness. Also I tried this and some cut-scenes were so poorly timed that this doesn't work because it would cut away before they even finished talking. Makes me think you didn't even play the game you're defending.

[@pvshka]

@@raijuko then just don't do the dubbing at all instead of doing a bad one.

[@fenrissilverfang8419]

At least one line of dialogue was spot on. "Everything is complicated today." ... I felt that.

[@DarkSoulsGaming]

I've been watching all of these videos as I grind out Grand Chase Classic, an MMO you should definitely do a video on. This Wednesday (May 24th, 2023) they will be releasing an update making the new player experience much quicker, easier, and with more loot making it the perfect time to check it out! Elsword was technically a sequel to Grand Chase, but I never personally got into it. It would blow my mind to see this game get some attention! I even named my son after one of the main characters! Those voice lines... thats all of the video for me... those voice lines

[@dartnephilim8717]

I listen to this while working and at about the 27 minute mark a cutscene ended and an ad for Australia tourism started. I can’t tell you where one ended and the other began.

[@Yithiru]

I had such high hopes, I love the Chinese fantasy setting and those games rarely get translated to English ... I was so disappointed. Feels like the game would've been much better if they skipped the English VA and used that money to do a better job at translating instead.

[@chilairearts4238]

Yeah it seems nothing released in the west so far has beaten age of wushu when it had it’s golden days. Too bad it too has died down

[@ladylark10884]

it would've been great imo, they should've just used the chinese VA and english subs, and used less money for advertising

[@dragom4730]

If I were to guess, I'd say that the VO and the subtitles are different because two different teams were localising them with nobody cross-checking the result. This genuinely makes me wonder whether MMOs like this are a laundering scheme...

[@YdenMk-II]

This isn't an uncommon thing in general. Most of the time the reason this happens in DVDs/Blu-rays is because the subtitles are meant to be more literal translations while the voice acting makes changes to fit the mouth movement. In a game like this, most likely they didn't finalize the written script by the time they scheduled the voice actor recording sessions. I'd imagine it mostly boils down to they had very tight timeframes to get things done either because of overconfidence in their own abilities or a management pushing for a deadline either for shareholder or marketing purposes.

[@racapadexxa_]

Or probably they said to the VOs "Say what u want about martial arts the plot doesn't matter"

[@Aurega88]

This is completely the case, and it's clear that they were working without any context in quite a lot of cases where they get the gender of the characters talking wrong.

[@Thund3rstorm]

My guess is rather voice overs take a lot longer than text translations so they had to send something over to a company that did that for them without the actual translations beeing ready. It's the reason not a whole lot of dialogue is or was voiced in FFXIV because you can't really alter the story and dialogues when voice actors are already working on it

[@buttermanaws4693]

They probably thought "the game is already done how hard can it be to rerecord the lines in english" and just did not bother to check the quality at all

[@Vaelosh466]

20:30 - This cutscene seems like they took the line timing from the Chinese version where the lines took less time to say. I guess the alternative would be to edit the cutscene to add more time for the characters to finish speaking but the translation team probably wasn't given that option.

[@simplyerayn6278]

Appreciated the nod to Rykard around the 33 minute mark. My sister and I watch a lot of your content and she actually showed me that segment. Safe to say we both laughed like idiots at such a simple joke. Well delivered, I suppose!

[@TheLetterJ0]

In the middle of the "cutscene that does everything wrong," my computer froze and made a constant high-pitched noise. It took me several seconds to realize that it wasn't just another problem with the cutscene.

[@urud591]

In a moment of weakness in my life, I applied as QA tester for this game. Luckily, my salary expectations were apparently too high, so when they realised how much a professional tester costs, they changed the advertisement from "senior QA tester" to "internship". I'm sure that whoever they hired, they reported some of these bugs (they are impossible to miss), but GF simply didn't care to fix them. It's a pity when years of development are ruined by a very poor QA. This is not Cyberpunk 2077 or New World, but still, it could have probably been a better game.

[@no_misaki]

So true. At least CDPR are still working to fix cyberpunk, whereas this MMO was likely soft abandoned the moment it went f2p.

[@jettnash5217]

Also a QA here, good fucking god this looks like they didn't even attempt to fix the most bloody obvious issues.

[@xianx2658]

I did preproduction in the US on this game prior to GF being involved. Simply put by the time it is released to us they aren't going to make many changes for the US audience or worry about bugs *unless* it does well. See something like ArcheAge. Their main hope is to make a bit of side hustle cash so to speak. The risk vs reward of putting that much effort in and it will likely fail is high.

[@iPuls3]

Not understating the importance of a proper QA team, but even volunteer QAs could catch half of these issues.

[@greatbullet7372]

@@xianx2658 the think is that stuff provokes it to fail.

[@TheNapkuchen]

The problems with the voice layering is the reason why my first step when implementing sounds is an actual sound manager where ALL sounds gets funnelled through. It's so easy to handle when you don't play the sound on the actor that does the sound xd

[@hexadoxical3949]

It's like they were thinking "Let's make a cash grab game based on a popular movie." and then halfway through they realized they actually had a really good game and were like "Oh, crap, this is actually good. We were supposed to make a crappy cash grab." and then phoned in the rest as hard as they possibly could to make the game not good. It's like "Oh, crap, the combat system is good." "Quick, make all the fun enemies die in one hit." "Oh, crap, the cutscenes are really cool." "Quick, add a bunch of subtitles for things that don't happen in the cutscenes." "Oh, crap, the sound design is atmospheric and immersive." "Quick, make the next voice line ten times louder."

[@Hotshot2k4]

This is the first game in your entire series that actually made me _angry_ during its cutscenes. I'm honestly kind of impressed that it managed to transcend simple mediocrity and low effort and instead create something so unexpectedly and genuinely irritating. I would have probably alt+F4'd the game midway through the cutscene at around 20:00 and immediately uninstalled it on steam, and then removed it from my library. What an absolute atrocity. Forcing someone to watch all these cutscenes should be classified as torture.

[@ROCKNROLL947]

Soy you haven't played FF14. The definition of atrocious mediocrity

[@Hotshot2k4]

@@ROCKNROLL947 Maybe FF14 isn't your thing, maybe it actually is bad (I haven't played it so I don't know), but it can't possibly be as bad as this. This right here is art. The dialogue is full of proper nouns that are unknowable to anyone except perhaps fans of the show, the translation seems to have different definitions for the same exact words which the voice actors read with zero thought or comprehension so even fans wouldn't understand it, lines are getting cut off and overlapping because they took too long to say in English and the whole cutscene is clearly a prerecorded video with zero allowance for longer voiceover from characters. Of course the subtitles don't match up with the voiceover, but in this case it's the least offensive part of this auditory crime against humanity. This is so bad, it would get chewed out if it were a middle school group project, but it's supposed to be a $40 game with AAA graphics. This isn't mediocre, it's mega awful.

[@kittenwizard4703]

@@Hotshot2k4 idk it probably is worse

[@jiyaoo]

@@kittenwizard4703 i mean, imo FF14 has prolly one of the best stories in a video game

[@defurious]

SUCH DEVASTATION

[@Flylighter]

"You can animate what you want to have happen! Just have the model slap me on the shoulder in-game!" They couldn't fit that animation into their strict 88-gigabyte budget.

[@saraatea2299]

i played that game for like 200-400 hours i dont really remember, and i didn't know i have a sword or whatever inside me.

[@Kisamaism]

This almost seems like sabotage. Like there's an idea that they have to show that localization isn't worth it because the west is anti-...something. But then I remember the medicine quest, the dragon mech, the mech mech, the lack of mouth movement...